Where to Fly?

Where should an organization do business, locally, nationally or internationally? Organizations should rather be thinking in terms of where it makes good business sense, where the organization will survive. A vision of where the organization is going to needs to be developed and communicated, and everyone in the organization needs to understand the vision, as they have to implement it (Rollins et al., 2002).

An important goal of strategic planning is to anticipate change beyond the control of the organization, so change within the organization can be initiated and controlled (Ivancevich & Matteson, 1999).

A strategy needs to be defined that includes all the capabilities (forces/tools/resources) of an organization, so that approved plans may be executed as effectively as possible (Henderson & Venkatraman, 1999). Strategy articulates ways in which opportunities can be exploited using the organizations capabilities (Burgleman et al., 2001). Strategy without capabilities is meaningless (Burgleman et al., 2001), and excluding the IT capability from the organizations strategy renders the strategy less effective at best. Similarly having capabilities without strategy makes them aimless (Burgleman et al., 2001). The IT capability must therefore be part of the overall strategy or IT will become an aimless capability of the organization, or at best, will be run according to the IT manager's aims. Managing the IT resource is a basic business function (Burgleman et al., 2001), which should be the responsibility of all managers within an organization.

A number of elements must fit together in a balanced way in order for an organization to function effectively. Sawy (2001) uses the Leavitt Diamond framework to illustrate the balance. The framework has four sets of organizational variables: IT use, organizational form, people skills, and business processes. When any one of these is changed, the other three need to be adjusted to maintain 'functional harmony' (Sawy, 2001).

Organizations need to define exactly where they are going, and ensure that all stakeholders know why, and where the destination is.